Watch Dogs

Overview

The game provides unique and inventive tools to play with, though it doesn’t really push you to use them in interesting ways. It wants to be a game about hacking, but most of the time it's yet another third-person action game. At any time, you can press X to hack. But it’s easier to just fire a gun instead.

Watch Dogs is an entertaining open-world experience, but it lacks depth. A wide variety of skills and vehicles are available to unlock throughout the game, but the skill unlocks don't feel much like rewards and honestly should have been available from...

Watch Dogs is Ubisoft's newest open-world IP, where the city of Chicago lies in the palm of your hand, quite literally. You play as Aiden Pearce, a hacker whose life turned upside down after a hotel robbery went wrong and he pissed off the wrong people....

If you can't wait for the inevitable PS4/Xbone GTA V release, Watch_Dogs will scratch the itch. It's a real shame that its hacking abilities, while fun, aren't much more than gimmicks, and that it feels so short on character, however. This is no herald...

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Publisher: Ubisoft Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PS4, X360, PS3 Version Reviewed: PC Take any opencity game of the last five years that has driving, cover shooting, a central storyline and abundant side missions. Stir in the...

Somewhere, in its vague, fantastical version of hacking, there's a lesson about the power and the naughty temptations that lurk in our networked, selfie-loving world. And I think that lesson is ... the lesson is ... that it's good to be a wizard!

This version of Chicago is crawling with a hyperbolic number of degenerates, and I didn't mind squashing pyromaniacs and slavers under my tires as I plowed through the streets chasing after a hacker, hip-hop beats blasting from the radio. After all, the struggling mothers and homeless beggars wandering Chicago deserve some peace of mind, and doling out some street justice is a good first step.

It leans heavily on noir stereotypes - the sexualized female source of info, the character macguffins, the muddy morality and lack of easy choices. It leans so heavily on those noir stereotypes that it becomes achingly predictable - and picks up the genre’s sexism to boot.

It's good, and yet that always feels like a criticism when a game comes weighed down by this much hype. You won't regret the time you spend in Aiden Pearce's world, but nor will it be saved as a precious memory when you reboot.

Watch Dogs was so well received at E3 2012 not for its looks, but what it promised: a truly new way to play open-world games in which the concept of agency extends beyond choosing where to go and what to do next. And whether you’re on foot, behind the wheel or in combat, Watch Dogs delivers on that promise. Rarely has a single button done so much, and so well.

Between the deep levels of customization and the sheer breadth of content, there's no shortage of things to do. If Ubisoft can take the game's core fun factor and marry it with an actual "next-gen" experience the next time around, they'll have something truly special.

The story is unlikely to keep you logged in, and the missions will often feel annoyingly familiar, but if you connect with and really explore this high-tech world, there are plenty of virtual--and emotional--rewards to harvest.